I spent Friday evening digging through my bookshelf... a couple of sections have gotten dusty from neglect. It's spring and even housekeeping-challenged packrats such as myself feel the urge to let go of a few items and clean the rest. Among the oddities which I listed on Amazon last night in the hope of some customer who might consider these to be needful things:

- Visualizations of the Dog Standards, Alice M. Wagner, 1959. I must have picked this one up at the thrift store after watching Best in Show. The book features hundreds of black and white photographs of show dogs such as Blakeen Ding Ding, standard poodle; Honey Hollow Stormi Rudio, Great Dane; and Bull Terrier The White Rock of Coolyn Hill. Turning the pages of this book reminds me of my own dog limitations and failures. In my own world, the dogs I have owned include: Aretha aka Urethra, nervous Shelter Mutt who peed on every square inch of installed carpet; Sadie, the Rottweiler who never acknowledged that she was a grown dog and crawled into the lap of any unsuspecting visitor; and Diva, the Apricot Poodle who had spent her formative years in the lap of a rich woman and gave contemptuous looks at us for reducing her living standards to our own.

- How to Remember Names and Faces, Edward Stoddard, 1958. Part of Nelson Doubleday's Personal Success Program, this book includes a set of face cards with attributes on the rear to test one's memory. If I had to date one of these suit-and-tie men, I might choose Phillip Burman, Unmarried Sophomore and Jazz Hobbyist. He's kind of movie star hunky. I would avoid Leslie Evans, Golf Player and husband of Gertrude - he looks kind of shifty. But I am mesmerized by the goateed Werner, Freelance Artist who Loves to Ski. He's kind of the beatnik of the bunch. I might pal around with Susan Taylor, Bachelor Girl from Chicago. She likes to Dance and Read, just like me.
Okay, I know that in 2007 we live in a weird world, but between memory books and doggie tomes, the 50s look like strange times indeed.

- Secrets of the UFO, Don Elkins with Carla Ruekert, 1977. They were channeling when channeling wasn't cool. I can't really be critical of extraterrestrial reincarnated meditational hypnotic musings, but something about this book, for me, induces bouts of sleepiness. Perhaps that's the point? To lower my resistance to The Message? But I like the space needle drawing on the cover with the flying saucers surrounding it, and I'm a sucker for self-published works (which, apparently, is still in print).

All of these classic works are available through Amazon on my seller's page:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/shops/index.html/104-0316211-1148773?ie=UTF8&sellerID=AMDK6WLOIP2S

NTD